Silvia Ferlito has now attended the last three ebbf international events and was given the opportunity to present in the last plenary what happened to her when she left the boost of an ebbf event and returned to her office on Monday.She decided to share how she makes the most of the ideas and inspiration captured to create a positive, and not a depressing, transition back into our working week.

How to…ebbf

“Have you ever asked yourself on how to implement all those inspiring ideas you have heard at the ebbf conference in your day to day work? I have no universal answer. There is many ways. But let me try to run through a process that helped me to make the first step.

In the beginning there is the WHY (Purpose) you attend the conference:Do you want to be inspired and receive impulses in general for yourself personally or professionally or do you have a concrete topic you are currently working on.

Following the question you will be able to answer is the WHAT you want to achieve (CONTENT).What are the areas of change in your personal or professional life? What is it about your current project you see needs to be done differently? Who are the people involved? What are the timelines?

The next step is to check HOW you can get support for your journey (ENABLERS)To change, improve and create it is necessary that you tap into your internal as well as external resources. Internal resources can

Governance meaning different things to different people, and rethinking governance being the main theme of the next ebbf international event, we asked Washington-based ebbf member Gijs van de Fliert this question.Gijs came up with a number of current frameworks that address governance from an old world order mindset: complying and avoiding the negative. The challenge that Gijs offers is how can we transition to a new governance system centred around and inspired by the dignity, respect, equality, and justice of individuals in our workplaces.

Thinking about governance, what words or concepts would come to mind?

“Our governance has always been geared towards avoiding the negative and inappropriate behaviours and outcomes. The definition of inappropriate has been shifting dramatically in the 21st century. Although companies instituted moral and ethics programs with codes of conduct and rules, these were often setup to meet the minimum standards of a nation’s rules and regulations. Often these rules were merely focusing on a code of conduct in business dealings with other institutions. For example elaborate schemes were set up to prevent corruption practices, such as bribes, fraud, collusion, coercion in public bidding of contracts.

Corporate Governance established the rules of how companies could be governed with separations between management, independent board members and shareholders, with employees often in a more troublesome role of whistleblower.

Emerging from the 20th century came a new risk framework discipline called operational risk management, which tried to

“I was a young economist working on the IMF’s Spanish economic team. A challenging time for Spain as it was preparing for entry into the European Union at a time of internal crisis with very high unemployment and major sectors of the economy (e.g. steel, shipbuilding) in crisis due to the emergence of lower cost producers in other parts of the world.

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What impressed me the most was the extent to which the prospect of entry into the EU was forcing the government to extend the focus of economic policies beyond issues of macroeconomic stability to the fundamental institutional reforms. I remember, in particular, reforms aimed at liberalizing the inflow of foreign direct investment to facilitate the integration of the Spanish economy with the rest of Europe and, indeed, the world. With massive inflows of non-debt capital would also come know-how that would transform the country’s ageing productive apparatus.

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Spain joined the EU on January 1, 1986 and over the next two decades it was one of the best performing economies in Europe. In the years following entry into the EU Spain not only received massive inflows of foreign capital as foreign firms sought to benefit from Spain’s lower labor costs and free access to the large European market, but was also the recipient of large and generous transfers from the EU budget, to finance regional development, including an upgrading of the country’s then decrepit physical infrastructure.

.Implicit in all of this was the exercise of an important principle embedded in EU law: the richer member states transfer resources to the poorer members as part of a process of narrowing the income divide among countries and as a result of which intra-country inequality in the EU was reduced in a significant way.

You have until the 30th of November to send your proposal for a keynote or workshop at ebbf’s 28th annual conference.

We already have three outstanding speakers to elevate our thinking and challenge current governance structures to explore new ones, the ideal forms of governance that will allow ethical business to build the future.

We are now offering you the opportunity to either offer a keynote / workshop or to invite a speaker you would like to feature in ebbf’s next annual event taking place in Geneva from the 17th to the 20th of May 2018.

Most of the current systems of governance are either unjust, unfair or unable to adapt to the changing environment we are facing. How can you help us to explore new frameworks for decision-making and action? What personal experiences, new ideas, challenges you might be facing in your company do you wish to present?

DEADLINE FOR SENDING YOUR PROPOSAL OR FORWARDING TO ANOTHER POTENTIAL SPEAKER: